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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 1 - F. The Ethical Sense in Dreams Psychology
CHAPTER 1, Section G
G. Dream-Theories and the Function of the Dream
A statement concerning the dream which seeks to explain as many as possible
of its observed characteristics from a single point of view, and which at the
same time defines the relation of the dream to a more comprehensive sphere of
phenomena, may be described as a theory of the dream. The individual theories of
the dream will be distinguished from one another by their designating as
essential this or that characteristic of dreams, and relating thereto their data
and their explanations. It is not absolutely necessary that we should deduce
from the theory of the dream a function, i.e., a use or any such similar role,
but expectation, being as a matter of habit teleologically inclined, will
nevertheless welcome those theories which afford us some insight into a function
of dreams.
We have already become acquainted with many conceptions of the dream, which in
this sense are more or less deserving of the name of dream-theories. The belief
of the ancients that dreams were sent by the gods in order to guide the actions
of man was a complete theory of the dream, which told them all that was worth
knowing about dreams. Since dreams have become an object of biological research
we have a greater number of theories, some of which, however, are very
incomplete.
Provided we make no claim to completeness, we might venture on the following
rough grouping of dream-theories, based on their fundamental conception of the
degree and mode of the psychic activity in dreams:
1. Theories, like those of Delboeuf, which allow the full psychic activity of
the waking state to continue in our dreams. Here the psyche does not sleep; its
apparatus remains intact; but under the conditions of the sleeping state, which
differ from those of the waking state, it must in its normal functioning give
results which differ from those of the waking state. As regards these theories,
it may be questioned whether their authors are in a position to derive the
distinction between dreaming and waking thought entirely from the conditions of
the sleeping state. Moreover, they lack one possible access to a function of
dreams; one does not understand to what purpose one dreams- why the complicated
mechanism of the psychic apparatus should continue to operate even when it is
placed under conditions to which it does not appear to be adapted. There are
only two purposeful reactions in the place of the reaction of dreaming: to sleep
dreamlessly, or to wake when affected by disturbing stimuli.
2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the dream a diminution of the
psychic activity, a loosening of connections, and an impoverishment of the
available material. In accordance with these theories, one must assume for sleep
a psychological character entirely different from that given by Delboeuf. Sleep
encroaches widely upon the psyche; it does not consist in the mere shutting it
off from the outer world; on the contrary, it enters into its mechanism, and
makes it for the time being unserviceable. If I may draw a comparison from
psychiatry, I would say that the first group of theories construes the dream
like a paranoia, while the second represents it as a type of mental deficiency
or amentia.
The theory that only a fragment of the psychic activity paralysed by sleep finds
expression in dreams is that by far the most favoured by medical writers, and by
scientists in general. In so far as one may presuppose a general interest in
dream-interpretation, one may indeed describe it as the most popular theory of
dreams. It is remarkable how nimbly this particular theory avoids the greatest
danger that threatens every dream-interpretation; that is, shipwreck on one of
the contrasts incorporated in dreams. Since this theory regards dreams as the
result of a partial waking (or, as Herbart puts it in his Psychologie uber den
Traum, "a gradual, partial, and at the same time very anomalous waking"), it is
able to cover the whole series, from the inferior activities of dreams, which
betray themselves by their absurdity, to fully concentrated intellectual
activity, by a series of states of progressive awakening, ending in complete
wakefulness.
Those who find the physiological mode of expression indispensable, or who deem
it more scientific, will find this theory of dreams summarized in Binz's
description (p. 43):
"This state (of torpor), however, gradually comes to an end in the hours of
early morning. The accumulated products of fatigue in the albumen of the brain
gradually diminish. They are slowly decomposed, or carried away by the
constantly flowing blood-stream. Here and there individual groups of cells can
be distinguished as being awake, while around them all is still in a state of
torpidity. The isolated work of the individual groups now appears before our
clouded consciousness, which is still powerless to control other parts of the
brain, which govern the associations. Hence the pictures created, which for the
most part correspond to the objective impressions of the immediate past, combine
with one another in a wild and uncontrolled fashion. As the number of
brain-cells set free constantly increases, the irrationality of the dream
becomes constantly less."
The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial waking state, or traces of
the influence of this conception, will of course be found in the works of all
the modern physiologists and philosophers. It is most completely represented by
Maury. It often seems as though this author conceives the state of being awake
or asleep as susceptible of shifting from one anatomical region to another; each
anatomical region seeming to him to be connected with a definite psychic
function. Here I will merely suggest that even if the theory of partial waking
were confirmed, its finer superstructure would still call for exhaustive
consideration.
No function of dreams, of course, can emerge from this conception of the
dream-life. On the contrary, Binz, one of the chief proponents of this theory,
consistently enough denies that dreams have any status or importance. He says
(p. 357): "All the facts, as we see them, urge us to characterize the dream as a
physical process, in all cases useless, and in many cases definitely morbid."
The expression physical in reference to dreams (the word is emphasized by the
author) points, of course, in more than one direction. In the first place, it
refers to the aetiology of dreams, which was of special interest to Binz, as he
was studying the experimental production of dreams by the administration of
drugs. It is certainly in keeping with this kind of dream-theory to ascribe the
incitement to dreaming, whenever possible, exclusively to somatic origins.
Presented in the most extreme form the theory is as follows: After we have put
ourselves to sleep by the banishment of stimuli, there would be no need to
dream, and no reason for dreaming until the morning, when the gradual awakening
through the fresh invasion of stimuli might be reflected in the phenomenon of
dreaming. But, as a matter of fact, it is not possible to protect our sleep from
stimuli; like the germs of life of which Mephistopheles complained, stimuli come
to the sleeper from all directions- from without, from within, and even from all
those bodily regions which never trouble us during the waking state. Thus our
sleep is disturbed; now this, now that little corner of the psyche is jogged
into the waking state, and the psyche functions for a while with the awakened
fraction, yet is thankful to fall asleep again. The dream is the reaction to the
disturbance of sleep caused by the stimulus, but it is, when all is said, a
purely superfluous reaction.
The description of the dream- which, after all, remains an activity of the
psychic organ- as a physical process has yet another connotation. So to describe
it is to deny that the dream has the dignity of a psychic process. The old
simile of "the ten fingers of a person ignorant of music running over the
keyboard of an instrument" perhaps best illustrates in what esteem the dream is
commonly held by the representatives of exact science. Thus conceived, it
becomes something wholly insusceptible of interpretation. How could the ten
fingers of a player ignorant of music perform a musical composition?
The theory of partial wakefulness did not escape criticism even by the earlier
writers. Thus Burdach wrote in 1830: "If we say that dreaming is a partial
waking, then, in the first place, neither the waking nor the sleeping state is
explained thereby; secondly, this amounts only to saying that certain powers of
the mind are active in dreams while others are at rest. But such irregularities
occur throughout life..." (p. 482).
The prevailing dream-theory which conceives the dream as a "physical" process
finds a certain support in a very interesting conception of the dream which was
first propounded by Robert in 1866, and which is seductive because it assigns to
the dream a function or a useful result. As the basis of his theory Robert takes
two objectively observable facts which we have already discussed in our
consideration of dream-material (chapter I., B). These facts are: (1) that one
very often dreams about the most insignificant impressions of the day; and (2)
that one rarely carries over into the dream the absorbing interests of the day.
Robert asserts as an indisputable fact that those matters which have been fully
settled and solved never evoke dreams, but only such as lie incompleted in the
mind, or touch it merely in passing (p. 10). "For this reason we cannot usually
explain our dreams, since their causes are to be found in sensory impressions of
the preceding day which have not attained sufficient recognition on the part of
the dreamer." The condition permitting an impression to reach the dream is,
therefore, that this impression has been disturbed in its elaboration, or that
it was too insignificant to lay claim to such elaboration.
Robert therefore conceives the dream "as a physical process of elimination which
in its psychic reaction reaches the consciousness." Dreams are eliminations of
thoughts nipped in the bud. "A man deprived of the capacity for dreaming would
in time become mentally unbalanced, because an immense number of unfinished and
unsolved thoughts and superficial impressions would accumulate in his brain,
under the pressure of which all that should be incorporated in the memory as a
completed whole would be stifled." The dream acts as a safety-valve for the
over-burdened brain. Dreams possess a healing and unburdening power (p. 32).
We should misunderstand Robert if we were to ask him how representation in the
dream could bring about an unburdening of the mind. The writer apparently
concluded from these two peculiarities of the dream-material that during sleep
such an elimination of worthless impressions is effected somehow as a somatic
process; and that dreaming is not a special psychic process, but only the
information which we receive of such elimination. Moreover, elimination is not
the only thing that takes place in the mind during sleep. Robert himself adds
that the stimuli of the day are likewise elaborated, and "what cannot be
eliminated from the undigested thought-material lying in the mind is bound up
into a completed whole by mental clues borrowed from the imagination, and is
thus enrolled in the memory as a harmless phantasy-picture" (p. 23).
But it is in his criticism of the sources of dreams that Robert is most flatly
opposed to the prevailing theory. Whereas according to this theory there would
be no dream if the external and internal sensory stimuli did not repeatedly wake
the mind, according to Robert the impulse to dream lies in the mind itself. It
lies in the overloading of the mind, which demands discharge, and Robert
considers, quite consistently, that those causes conditioning the dream which
depend on the physical condition assume a subordinate rank, and could not incite
dreams in a mind which contained no material for dream-formation derived from
the waking consciousness. It is admitted, however, that the phantasy-images
originating in the depths of the mind may be influenced by nervous stimuli (p.
48). Thus, according to Robert, dreams are not, after all, wholly dependent on
the somatic element. Dreaming is, of course, not a psychic process, and it has
no place among the psychic processes of the waking state; it is a nocturnal
somatic process in the apparatus of mental activity, and has a function to
perform, viz., to guard this apparatus against excessive strain, or, if we may
be allowed to change the comparison, to cleanse the mind.
Another author, Yves Delage, bases his theory on the same characteristics of the
dream- characteristics which are perceptible in the selection of the
dream-material, and it is instructive to observe how a trifling twist in the
conception of the same things gives a final result entirely different in its
bearings. Delage, having lost through death a person very dear to him, found
that we either do not dream at all of what occupies us intently during the day,
or that we begin to dream of it only after it is overshadowed by the other
interests of the day. His investigations in respect of other persons
corroborated the universality of this state of affairs. Concerning the dreams of
newly-married people, he makes a comment which is admirable if it should prove
to be generally true: "S'ils ont ete fortement epris, presque jamais ils n'ont
reve l'un de l'autre avant le mariage ou pendant la lune de miel; et s'ils ont
reve d'amour c'est pour etre infideles avec quelque personne indifferente ou
odieuse." * But of what does one dream? Delage recognizes that the material of
our dreams consists of fragments and remnants of impressions, both from the last
few days and from earlier periods. All that appears in our dreams, all that we
may at first be inclined to consider the creation of the dream-life, proves on
closer investigation to be unrecognized reproduction, "souvenir inconscient."
But this representative material reveals one common characteristic; it
originates from impressions which have probably affected our senses more
forcibly than our mind, or from which the attention has been deflected soon
after their occurrence. The less conscious, and at the same time the stronger an
impression, the greater the prospect of its playing a part in our next dream.
* If they are very much in love, they have almost never dreamed of each other
before the marriage or during the honeymoon; and if they have dreamed of love,
it was to be unfaithful with someone unimportant or distasteful.
These two categories of impressions- the insignificant and the undisposed-of-
are essentially the same as those which were emphasized by Robert, but Delage
gives them another significance, inasmuch as he believes that these impressions
are capable of exciting dreams not because they are indifferent, but because
they are not disposed of. The insignificant impressions also are, in a sense,
not fully disposed of; they, too, owing to their character of new impressions,
are "autant de ressorts tendus," * which will be relaxed during sleep. Still
more entitled to a role in the dream than a weak and almost unnoticed impression
is a vivid impression which has been accidentally retarded in its elaboration,
or intentionally repressed. The psychic energy accumulated during the day by
inhibition or suppression becomes the mainspring of the dream at night. In
dreams psychically suppressed material achieves expression. *(2)
* So many taut lines.
*(2) A novelist, Anatole France, expresses himself to a similar effect (Le Lys
Rouge): "Ce que nous voyons la nuit ce sont les restes malheureux que nous avons
neglige dans la veille. Le reve est souvent la revanche des choses qu'on meprise
ou le reproche des etres abandonnes." [What we see at night are the unhappy
relics that we neglected while awake. The dream is often the revenge of things
scorned or the reproach of beings deserted.]
Unfortunately Delage does not pursue this line of thought any farther; he is
able to ascribe only the most insignificant role in our dreams to an independent
psychic activity, and thus, in his theory of dreams, he reverts to the
prevailing doctrine of a partial slumber of the brain: "En somme le reve est le
produit de la pensee errante, sans but et sans direction, se fixant
successivement sur les souvenirs, qui ont garde assez d'intensite pour se placer
sur sa route et l'arreter au passage, etablissant entre eux un lien tantot
faible et indecis, tantot plus fort et plus serre, selon que l'activite actuelle
du cerveau est plus ou moins abolie par le sommeil." *
* In short, the dream is the product of wandering thought, without end or
direction, successively fixing on memories which have retained sufficient
intensity to put themselves in the way and block the passage, establishing
between themselves a connection sometimes weak and loose, sometimes stronger and
closer, according to whether the actual work of the brain is more or less
suppressed by sleep.
3. In a third group we may include those dream-theories which ascribe to the
dreaming mind the capacity for and propensity to special psychic activities,
which in the waking state it is able to exert either not at all or imperfectly.
In most cases the manifestation of these activities is held to result in a
useful function of dreams. The evaluations of dreams by the earlier
psychologists fall chiefly within this category. I shall content myself,
however, with quoting in their stead the assertion of Burdach, to the effect
that dreaming "is the natural activity of the mind, which is not limited by the
power of the individuality, nor disturbed by self-consciousness, nor directed by
self-determination, but is the vitality of the sensible focus indulging in free
play" (p. 486).
Burdach and others evidently consider this revelling in the free use of its own
powers as a state in which the mind refreshes itself and gathers fresh strength
for the day's work; something, indeed, after the fashion of a vacation. Burdach
therefore cites with approval the admirable words in which the poet Novalis
lauds the power of the dream: "The dream is a bulwark against the regularity and
commonplace character of life, a free recreation of the fettered phantasy, in
which it intermingles all the images of life and interrupts the constant
seriousness of the adult by the joyful play of the child. Without the dream we
should surely grow old earlier, so that the dream may be considered, if not
precisely as a gift from above, yet as a delightful exercise, a friendly
companion on our pilgrimage to the grave."
The refreshing and healing activity of dreams is even more impressively
described by Purkinje (p. 456). "The productive dreams in particular would
perform these functions. These are the unconstrained play of the imagination,
and have no connection with the events of the day. The mind is loth to continue
the tension of the waking life, but wishes to relax it and recuperate from it.
It creates, in the first place conditions opposed to those of the waking state.
It cures sadness by joy, worry by hope and cheerfully distracting images, hatred
by love and friendliness, and fear by courage and confidence; it appeases doubt
by conviction and firm belief, and vain expectation by realization. Sleep heals
many sore spots in the mind, which the day keeps continually open, by covering
them and guarding them against fresh irritation. On this depends in some degree
the consoling action of time." We all feel that sleep is beneficial to the
psychic life, and the vague surmise of the popular consciousness is apparently
loth to surrender the notion that dreaming is one of the ways in which sleep
bestows its benefits.
The most original and most comprehensive attempt to explain dreaming as a
special activity of the mind, which can freely unfold itself only in the
sleeping state, is that made by Scherner in 1861. Scherner's book is written in
a heavy and bombastic style and is inspired by an almost intoxicated enthusiasm
for the subject, which is bound to repel us unless it can carry us away with it.
It places so many difficulties in the way of an analysis that we gladly resort
to the clearer and conciser presentation of Scherner's theories made by the
philosopher Volkelt: "From these mystical conglomerations, from all these
outbursts of splendour and radiance, there indeed flashes and shines an ominous
semblance of meaning; but the path of the philosopher is not illumined thereby."
Such is the criticism of Scherner's exposition by one of his own followers.
Scherner is not one of those writers for whom the mind carries its undiminished
faculties into the dream-life. He even explains how, in our dreams, the
centrality and spontaneous energy of the ego become enervated; how cognition,
feeling, will, and imagination are transformed by this decentralization; how the
remnant of these psychic forces has not a truly intellectual character, but is
rather of the nature of a mechanism. But, on the other hand, that activity of
the psyche which may be described as phantasy, freed from all rational
governance, and hence no longer strictly controlled, rises to absolute supremacy
in our dreams. To be sure, it borrows all its building-material from the memory
of the waking state, but with this material it builds up structures which differ
from those of the waking state as day differs from night. In our dreams it
reveals itself as not only reproductive but also productive. Its peculiarities
give the dream-life its singular character. It shows a preference for the
unlimited, the exaggerated, the prodigious; but by its liberation from the
inhibiting categories of thought, it gains a greater flexibility and agility,
and indulges in pleasurable turns. It is excessively sensitive to the delicate
emotional stimuli of the mind, to its stirring and disturbing affects, and it
rapidly recasts the inner life into an external, plastic visibility. The dream-phantasy
lacks the language of concepts. What it wishes to say it must express in visible
form; and since in this case the concept does not exert an inhibitory control,
it depicts it in all the fulness, power, and breadth of visible form. But hereby
its language, plain though it is, becomes cumbersome, awkward, and prolix. Plain
speaking is rendered especially difficult by the fact that it dislikes
expressing an object by its actual image, but prefers to select an alien image,
if only the latter is able to express that particular aspect of the object which
it is anxious to represent. Such is the symbolizing activity of the phantasy....
It is, moreover, very significant that the dream-phantasy reproduces objects not
in detail, but only in outline, and in the freest possible manner. Its
paintings, therefore, are like light and brilliant sketches. The dream-phantasy,
however, does not stop at the mere representation of the object, but feels an
internal urge to implicate the dream-ego to some extent with the object, and
thus to give rise to action. The visual dream, for example, depicts gold coins
lying in the street; the dreamer picks them up, rejoices, and carries them away.
According to Scherner, the material upon which the dream-phantasy exerts its
artistic activity consists preponderantly of the organic sensory stimuli which
are so obscure during the day (cf. p. 151 above); hence it is that the
over-fantastic theory of Scherner, and perhaps too matter-of-fact theories of
Wundt and other physiologists, though otherwise diametrically opposed to each
other, are in perfect agreement in their assumptions with regard to
dream-sources and dream-stimuli. But whereas, according to the physiological
theory, the psychic reaction to the inner physical stimuli becomes exhausted
with the arousing of any of the ideas appropriate to these stimuli (as these
ideas then, by way of association, call to their aid other ideas, so that on
reaching this stage the chain of psychic processes appears to terminate),
according to Scherner, on the other hand, the physical stimuli merely supply the
psyche with material which it may utilize in fulfilling its phantastic
intentions. For Scherner dream-formation begins where, according to the views of
other writers, it comes to an end.
What the dream-phantasy does with the physical stimuli cannot, of course, be
regarded as purposeful. The phantasy plays a tantalizing game with them, and
represents the organic source of the stimuli of the dream in question by any
sort of plastic symbolism. Indeed, Scherner holds- though here Volkelt and
others differ from him- that the dream-phantasy has a certain favourite symbol
for the organism as a whole: namely, the house. Fortunately, however, for its
representations, it does not seem to limit itself to this material; it may also
employ a whole series of houses to designate a single organ; for example, very
long streets of houses for the intestinal stimulus. In other dreams particular
parts of the house may actually represent particular regions of the body, as in
the headache-dream, when the ceiling of the room (which the dream sees covered
with disgusting toad-like spiders) represents the head.
Quite apart from the symbol of the house, any other suitable object may be
employed to represent those parts of the body which excite the dream. "Thus the
breathing lungs find their symbol in the flaming stove with its windy roaring,
the heart in hollow chests and baskets, the bladder in round, ball-shaped, or
simply hollow objects. The man's dreams, when due to the sexual stimulus, make
the dreamer find in the street the upper portion of a clarinet, or the
mouthpiece of a tobacco-pipe, or, again, a piece of fur. The clarinet and
tobacco-pipe represent the approximate form of the male sexual organ, while the
fur represents the pubic hair. In the sexual dreams of the female, the tightness
of the closed thighs may be symbolized by a narrow courtyard surrounded by
houses, and the vagina by a very narrow, slippery and soft footpath, leading
through the courtyard, upon which the dreamer is obliged to walk, in order
perhaps to carry a letter to a man" (Volkelt, p. 39). It is particularly
noteworthy that at the end of such a physically stimulated dream the phantasy,
as it were, unmasks itself by representing the exciting organ or its function
unconcealed. Thus the "tooth-excited dream" usually ends with the dreamer taking
a tooth out of his mouth.
The dream-phantasy may, however, direct its attention not merely to the form of
the exciting organ, but may even make the substance contained therein the object
of symbolization. Thus, for example, the dream excited by the intestinal stimuli
may lead us through muddy streets, the dream due to stimuli from the bladder to
foaming water. Or the stimulus as such, the nature of its excitation, and the
object which it covets, are represented symbolically. Or, again, the dream-ego
enters into a concrete association with the symbolization of its own state; as,
for example, when in the case of painful stimuli we struggle desperately with
vicious dogs or raging bulls, or when in a sexual dream the dreamer sees herself
pursued by a naked man. Disregarding all the possible prolixity of elaboration,
a phantastic symbolizing activity remains as the central force of every dream.
Volkelt, in his fine and enthusiastic essay, attempted to penetrate still
further into the character of this phantasy, and to assign to the psychic
activity thus recognized its position in a system of philosophical ideas, which,
however, remains altogether too difficult of comprehension for anyone who is not
prepared by previous training for the intuitive comprehension of philosophical
modes of thought.
Scherner attributes no useful function to the activity of the symbolizing
phantasy in dreams. In dreams the psyche plays with the stimuli which are
offered to it. One might conjecture that it plays in a mischievous fashion. And
we might be asked whether our detailed consideration of Scherner's dream-theory,
the arbitrariness of which, and its deviation from the rules of all forms of
research are only too obvious, can lead to any useful results. We might fitly
reply that to reject Scherner's theory without previous examination would be
imposing too arrogant a veto. This theory is based on the impressions produced
by his dreams on a man who paid close attention to them, and who would appear to
be personally very well equipped for tracing obscure psychic phenomena.
Furthermore, it treats of a subject which (though rich in its contents and
relations) has for thousands of years appeared mysterious to humanity, and to
the elucidation of which science, strictly so called, has, as it confesses,
contributed nothing beyond attempting- in uncompromising opposition to popular
sentiment- to deny its content and significance. Finally, let us frankly admit
that it seems as though we cannot very well avoid the phantastical in our
attempts to explain dreams. We must remember also that there is such a thing as
a phantasy of ganglion cells; the passage cited (p. 87) from a sober and exact
investigator like Binz, which describes how the dawn of awakening floods the
dormant cell-masses of the cerebral cortex, is not a whit less fanciful and
improbable than Scherner's attempts at interpretation. I hope to be able to
demonstrate that there is something real underlying these attempts, though the
phenomena which he describes have been only vaguely recognized, and do not
possess the character of universality that should entitle them to be the basis
of a theory of dreams. For the present, Scherner's theory of dreams, in contrast
to the medical theory, may perhaps lead us to realize between what extremes the
explanation of dream-life is still unsteadily vacillating.
The Interpretation of Dreams
Chapter 1 - H. The Relation between Dreams and Mental Diseases
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